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o stop Spanish meddling in Gibraltar row
Little wonder the people of Gibraltar are preparing the warmest of welcomes for the Royal Navy frigate, HMS Westminster, when she docks on Monday as part of a routine exercise.
‘As soon as someone spots her on the horizon, we’ll have boats out to greet her,’ says Gareth Gingell from a local community action group called The Defenders of Gibraltar.
Foreign Office mandarins and high-brow British commentators may wince at the vulgar jingoism of it all. Why should a tiny tax haven be allowed to sour Britain’s relations with Spain?
As one Guardian columnist put it this week, places like Gibraltar are nothing more than ‘Churchillian theme parks of red pillar boxes, fish and chips and warm beer’.
Gibraltar yesterday unveiled designs for a new £20 silver coin featuring Churchill and the words ‘We shall never surrender’ (it had been planned for months).
This is a place so wedded to the British way of life that two juggernauts leave Britain every day just to stock the Gib branch of Morrisons. This week, the Gibraltarian government announced production of the world’s first stamp commemorating the birth of Prince George.
If you try to point out Spain's own string of post-colonial possessions on the African coast, such as Ceuta, the response is a furious outburst of sanctimonious shrieking (Robert Hardman pictured)
If you try to point out Spain's own string of post-colonial possessions on the African coast, such as Ceuta, the response is a furious outburst of sanctimonious shrieking (Robert Hardman pictured)
Yet such patriotism is scoffed at by sophisticated, Europhile bien-pensants for whom it is always ‘silly old Britain’ rather than her adversary that is clinging obsessively to the past.
This is the classic, arrogant perspective of the grand appeaser who has not had to endure hour after hour, day after day, sitting in 30c heat at the whim of a latter-day mini-Franco in the Spanish foreign ministry. Many of the people I find queuing stoically at the frontier happen to be Spanish, since Gibraltar employs 10,000 people from a part of Spain with more than 30 per cent unemployment.
Edward Macquisten of the Gibraltar Chamber of Commerce points out that the region has Gib to thank for one in six jobs. Spain is punishing its own.
In recent days, though, Madrid has ordered its commissars on the Gibraltar border to make life as miserable as possible for that pesky rock, with its full employment, its fish and chips, its low taxes, its photos of the Queen and its squeaky-clean little government.
This week, I have watched a perfectly fluid border-crossing turn into a five-hour traffic jam, with one arbitrary click of the fingers from a cross-looking man in a comedy moustache and green Guardia Civil uniform.
‘This is an utter disgrace. Get Rajoy [the Spanish Prime Minister] to suffer this,’ says Manuel Abad, 43, a Gibraltarian ship agent, waiting in a queue of mopeds stretching as far as I can see. The next scooter in the queue has Spanish plates and a Spanish rider. ‘Sack Rajoy!’ she shouts in Spanish.
Few have suffered as badly as Wayne McKay, a 37-year-old call-centre manager. Two weeks ago, he was beaten up by four Spanish policemen and thrown in a Spanish cell, and now awaits two charges of assault, after riding his bicycle up the wrong lane to Spanish passport control.
An exaggeration? Not when I listen to his patient, detailed account of the beating — right down to the Arabic tattoo between the shoulders of a policeman called ‘Jesus’, who stripped off his shirt before administering the first blows.
Five generations of Wayne’s family have been policemen in Gibraltar, and he has never been in trouble in his life. Now, he is a nervous wreck, as he prepares for his day in (a Spanish) court.
Yesterday, Gib’s chief minister Fabian Picardo assured me that Wayne has the full support of his government. ‘You can see much of what happened on video,’ he says, describing the Guardia Civil as ‘storm troopers’ reminiscent of the Turkish police in the classic film Midnight Express. In Madrid, the government has threatened everything from a £43 toll for crossing the border to the closure of Spanish airspace to British planes and even a ban on ships refuelling from Gibraltarian supply barges.
The people of Gibraltar are preparing the warmest of welcomes for the Royal Navy frigate, HMS Westminster, when she docks on Monday as part of a routine exercise
The people of Gibraltar are preparing the warmest of welcomes for the Royal Navy frigate, HMS Westminster, when she docks on Monday as part of a routine exercise
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also declared he was joining forces with Argentina’s Malvinas-mad President Cristina Kirchner to form a Brit-bashing double act at the UN — until it turned out he’d forgotten to discuss it with her.
At a more local level, Spain has resorted to diverting excess sewage to a Gibraltarian tourist spot. ‘Four years ago, they built a storm drain, and instead of sending it out into the bay they pointed it towards Western Beach,’ says Mr Picardo.
There has to be some sort of excuse for all this. Even the imploding administration of Mr Rajoy cannot admit it is bullying Gibraltar for the hell of it. So it has had to manufacture various trumped-up charges. For years, Madrid has been insisting that border checks are crucial to combat cigarette smuggling into Spain — although this hardly explains why there are five-hour queues to get into Gibraltar, as there were yesterday morning.
In the past few days, though, Spain has come up with an entirely different excuse. And it is one that is gathering sympathy and support in Spain. ‘This is a violation of EU and international law!’ thundered the Spanish foreign ministry, following this month’s construction of an artificial reef by the Gibraltar authorities.
Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy declared he was joining forces with Argentina's Malvinas-mad President Cristina Kirchner to form a Brit-bashing double act at the UN
Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy declared he was joining forces with Argentina's Malvinas-mad President Cristina Kirchner to form a Brit-bashing double act at the UN
Supported by Greenpeace no less, the reef has been built to help replenish and protect dwindling fish stocks. Angrier than a ton of beef charging down the cobbles of Pamplona, Mr Rajoy and his ministers have railed at this ‘attack on the environment’.
Though Spain is happy to pump the contents of 10,000 lavatories into the path of Gibraltarian swimmers, it professes outrage that 73 blocks of hollowed-out concrete should be dumped on the ocean floor. Worse still, it claims, this is jeopardising the livelihoods of countless Spanish fishermen who earn their living in these waters. Compensation, Britain, por favor!
On the Spanish side of the border, I find considerable local sympathy for these claims, even from Spaniards who depend on Gibraltar for their livelihood.
There is just one problem with the Spanish argument. It is complete and utter codswallop. For I find that over the last few years, the Spanish department of agriculture and fisheries has installed no less than 25 identical artificial reefs along this Andalucian coastline. What’s more, it received an EU grant for three-quarters of the £11 million cost. ‘The only difference between their reefs and ours,’ says Mr Picardo, ‘is that the EU paid for the Spanish reefs. We paid for our own.’
What’s more, the only sort of fishing affected by the new reef is raking the sea bed — which is illegal anyway. And only one Spanish fishing boat is known to fish this area.
So, here we have it. Spain is punishing 30,000 Brits and thousands of Spanish workers for creating a marine sanctuary — just like its own — which may stop one fisherman from breaking the law.
It is beyond a joke. It is worse than ‘sabre-rattling’, as Mr Picardo described it recently. It is pure banditry. And it is entirely right that the British Government has finally ignored the feeble, hand-wringing, ‘don’t-upset-the-Spanish’ wing of the Foreign Office.
Instead, David Cameron has told Spain that Britain will not tolerate these threats, that Gibraltar has an inviolable right to self-determination, and that Britain is studying Spain’s behaviour for potential breaches of EU law.
Both he and Foreign Secretary William Hague have repeatedly condemned recent events, condemnations which, in the past, might have come from an ambassador or a junior FCO minister.
Spain is starting to get the message, aware its threats and sanctions will not stand up to legal scrutiny.
Just six weeks ago, I was here in Gibraltar after a Guardia Civil patrol boat fired plastic bullets at a blameless Gibraltarian on a jetski.
David Cameron has told Spain that Britain will not tolerate their threats, that Gibraltar has an inviolable right to self-determination and that Britain is studying Spain's behaviour for potential breaches of EU law
David Cameron has told Spain that Britain will not tolerate their threats, that Gibraltar has an inviolable right to self-determination and that Britain is studying Spain's behaviour for potential breaches of EU law
Back then, everyone here was moaning that the British Government was ‘not doing enough’.
Not any more.
‘David Cameron has been staunch on this,’ says Dominique Searle, editor of the Gibraltar Chronicle newspaper. ‘I can’t think of the last time the British Government was held in such high regard.’
In Britain, Jim Dobbin MP, Labour chairman of Westminster’s All-Party Group on Gibraltar proclaims cross-party unity on the issue.
Fabian Picardo has been touched by the response from Britain — especially Mail readers — and shows me a card he received from a little girl from London called Lucy, enclosing £10 of her pocket money. ‘There’s no address, so maybe you could ask her to get in touch so we can thank her,’ he says.
While I’m having a cup of tea with the battered Wayne McKay and his family, the view is the same. ‘If Cameron walked down Main Street, we’d shake his hand,’ says Wayne’s father, Peter, a former teacher.
He says the current situation is the worst since the days when the fascist Spanish leader General Franco closed the border completely.
‘This place was like a glorified Alcatraz back then. The only way to show my pupils the wider world was to take them on a ferry to Morocco. I’ll never forget when they all lurched over to one side of the bus. It was the first time they’d ever seen a scarecrow!’
Motorists queue at the border crossing between Spain and Gibraltar in La Linea de la Concepcion. Horns honk. Every time queues like this happen, the local tourist trade suffers another body blow
Motorists queue at the border crossing between Spain and Gibraltar in La Linea de la Concepcion. Horns honk. Every time queues like this happen, the local tourist trade suffers another body blow
Like everyone here, Peter asks how Spain has the temerity to attack Britain’s ‘colonial’ presence in Gibraltar while Spain sits on several chunks of Morocco — despite vocal protests from the Moroccan government.
In Ceuta, you can’t move for Spanish flags, Spanish road signs and Spanish police. It is impossible to find a single one of the 78,000 citizens who believes they should be Moroccan. And, interestingly, all seem sympathetic to Gibraltar.
‘If Gibraltar goes back to Spain, then we’ll have to go back to Morocco,’ says Ismail Abdel Krim, 42, a mechanic (of Moroccan descent) from the poor district of Los Rosales.
Back on the Rock, another traffic jam stretches into the distance. Horns honk. I can hear several babies screaming their heads off at various points in the queue. Every time queues like this happen, the local tourist trade suffers another body blow.
What’s the answer? Ask the FCO mandarins and they will call for calm and dialogue. Gibraltar’s UKIP MEP, William (Earl of) Dartmouth, has another idea. ‘The Queen has not been to Gibraltar for almost 60 years,’ he says. ‘Her presence would show that we mean business.’
Mr Picardo insists: ‘She needs no invitation to come to the most loyal part of her realm, and she would be assured of the warmest welcome anywhere in the world.’
Besides, it was not long ago that King Juan Carlos of Spain made a visit to Ceuta.
There is not the faintest chance of the Queen dropping by here any time soon — though next month’s National Day would be a good moment. If she did, the Spanish border would doubtless be slammed shut for days.
But it would probably be worth it just to hear what nonsense the desperate Mr Rajoy and his hypocritical sidekicks cook up next.

o stop Spanish meddling in Gibraltar row
Little wonder the people of Gibraltar are preparing the warmest of welcomes for the Royal Navy frigate, HMS Westminster, when she docks on Monday as part of a routine exercise.
‘As soon as someone spots her on the horizon, we’ll have boats out to greet her,’ says Gareth Gingell from a local community action group called The Defenders of Gibraltar.
Foreign Office mandarins and high-brow British commentators may wince at the vulgar jingoism of it all. Why should a tiny tax haven be allowed to sour Britain’s relations with Spain?
As one Guardian columnist put it this week, places like Gibraltar are nothing more than ‘Churchillian theme parks of red pillar boxes, fish and chips and warm beer’.
Gibraltar yesterday unveiled designs for a new £20 silver coin featuring Churchill and the words ‘We shall never surrender’ (it had been planned for months).
This is a place so wedded to the British way of life that two juggernauts leave Britain every day just to stock the Gib branch of Morrisons. This week, the Gibraltarian government announced production of the world’s first stamp commemorating the birth of Prince George.
If you try to point out Spain's own string of post-colonial possessions on the African coast, such as Ceuta, the response is a furious outburst of sanctimonious shrieking (Robert Hardman pictured)
If you try to point out Spain's own string of post-colonial possessions on the African coast, such as Ceuta, the response is a furious outburst of sanctimonious shrieking (Robert Hardman pictured)
Yet such patriotism is scoffed at by sophisticated, Europhile bien-pensants for whom it is always ‘silly old Britain’ rather than her adversary that is clinging obsessively to the past.
This is the classic, arrogant perspective of the grand appeaser who has not had to endure hour after hour, day after day, sitting in 30c heat at the whim of a latter-day mini-Franco in the Spanish foreign ministry. Many of the people I find queuing stoically at the frontier happen to be Spanish, since Gibraltar employs 10,000 people from a part of Spain with more than 30 per cent unemployment.
Edward Macquisten of the Gibraltar Chamber of Commerce points out that the region has Gib to thank for one in six jobs. Spain is punishing its own.
In recent days, though, Madrid has ordered its commissars on the Gibraltar border to make life as miserable as possible for that pesky rock, with its full employment, its fish and chips, its low taxes, its photos of the Queen and its squeaky-clean little government.
This week, I have watched a perfectly fluid border-crossing turn into a five-hour traffic jam, with one arbitrary click of the fingers from a cross-looking man in a comedy moustache and green Guardia Civil uniform.
‘This is an utter disgrace. Get Rajoy [the Spanish Prime Minister] to suffer this,’ says Manuel Abad, 43, a Gibraltarian ship agent, waiting in a queue of mopeds stretching as far as I can see. The next scooter in the queue has Spanish plates and a Spanish rider. ‘Sack Rajoy!’ she shouts in Spanish.
Few have suffered as badly as Wayne McKay, a 37-year-old call-centre manager. Two weeks ago, he was beaten up by four Spanish policemen and thrown in a Spanish cell, and now awaits two charges of assault, after riding his bicycle up the wrong lane to Spanish passport control.
An exaggeration? Not when I listen to his patient, detailed account of the beating — right down to the Arabic tattoo between the shoulders of a policeman called ‘Jesus’, who stripped off his shirt before administering the first blows.
Five generations of Wayne’s family have been policemen in Gibraltar, and he has never been in trouble in his life. Now, he is a nervous wreck, as he prepares for his day in (a Spanish) court.
Yesterday, Gib’s chief minister Fabian Picardo assured me that Wayne has the full support of his government. ‘You can see much of what happened on video,’ he says, describing the Guardia Civil as ‘storm troopers’ reminiscent of the Turkish police in the classic film Midnight Express. In Madrid, the government has threatened everything from a £43 toll for crossing the border to the closure of Spanish airspace to British planes and even a ban on ships refuelling from Gibraltarian supply barges.
The people of Gibraltar are preparing the warmest of welcomes for the Royal Navy frigate, HMS Westminster, when she docks on Monday as part of a routine exercise
The people of Gibraltar are preparing the warmest of welcomes for the Royal Navy frigate, HMS Westminster, when she docks on Monday as part of a routine exercise
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also declared he was joining forces with Argentina’s Malvinas-mad President Cristina Kirchner to form a Brit-bashing double act at the UN — until it turned out he’d forgotten to discuss it with her.
At a more local level, Spain has resorted to diverting excess sewage to a Gibraltarian tourist spot. ‘Four years ago, they built a storm drain, and instead of sending it out into the bay they pointed it towards Western Beach,’ says Mr Picardo.
There has to be some sort of excuse for all this. Even the imploding administration of Mr Rajoy cannot admit it is bullying Gibraltar for the hell of it. So it has had to manufacture various trumped-up charges. For years, Madrid has been insisting that border checks are crucial to combat cigarette smuggling into Spain — although this hardly explains why there are five-hour queues to get into Gibraltar, as there were yesterday morning.
In the past few days, though, Spain has come up with an entirely different excuse. And it is one that is gathering sympathy and support in Spain. ‘This is a violation of EU and international law!’ thundered the Spanish foreign ministry, following this month’s construction of an artificial reef by the Gibraltar authorities.
Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy declared he was joining forces with Argentina's Malvinas-mad President Cristina Kirchner to form a Brit-bashing double act at the UN
Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy declared he was joining forces with Argentina's Malvinas-mad President Cristina Kirchner to form a Brit-bashing double act at the UN
Supported by Greenpeace no less, the reef has been built to help replenish and protect dwindling fish stocks. Angrier than a ton of beef charging down the cobbles of Pamplona, Mr Rajoy and his ministers have railed at this ‘attack on the environment’.
Though Spain is happy to pump the contents of 10,000 lavatories into the path of Gibraltarian swimmers, it professes outrage that 73 blocks of hollowed-out concrete should be dumped on the ocean floor. Worse still, it claims, this is jeopardising the livelihoods of countless Spanish fishermen who earn their living in these waters. Compensation, Britain, por favor!
On the Spanish side of the border, I find considerable local sympathy for these claims, even from Spaniards who depend on Gibraltar for their livelihood.
There is just one problem with the Spanish argument. It is complete and utter codswallop. For I find that over the last few years, the Spanish department of agriculture and fisheries has installed no less than 25 identical artificial reefs along this Andalucian coastline. What’s more, it received an EU grant for three-quarters of the £11 million cost. ‘The only difference between their reefs and ours,’ says Mr Picardo, ‘is that the EU paid for the Spanish reefs. We paid for our own.’
What’s more, the only sort of fishing affected by the new reef is raking the sea bed — which is illegal anyway. And only one Spanish fishing boat is known to fish this area.
So, here we have it. Spain is punishing 30,000 Brits and thousands of Spanish workers for creating a marine sanctuary — just like its own — which may stop one fisherman from breaking the law.
It is beyond a joke. It is worse than ‘sabre-rattling’, as Mr Picardo described it recently. It is pure banditry. And it is entirely right that the British Government has finally ignored the feeble, hand-wringing, ‘don’t-upset-the-Spanish’ wing of the Foreign Office.
Instead, David Cameron has told Spain that Britain will not tolerate these threats, that Gibraltar has an inviolable right to self-determination, and that Britain is studying Spain’s behaviour for potential breaches of EU law.
Both he and Foreign Secretary William Hague have repeatedly condemned recent events, condemnations which, in the past, might have come from an ambassador or a junior FCO minister.
Spain is starting to get the message, aware its threats and sanctions will not stand up to legal scrutiny.
Just six weeks ago, I was here in Gibraltar after a Guardia Civil patrol boat fired plastic bullets at a blameless Gibraltarian on a jetski.
David Cameron has told Spain that Britain will not tolerate their threats, that Gibraltar has an inviolable right to self-determination and that Britain is studying Spain's behaviour for potential breaches of EU law
David Cameron has told Spain that Britain will not tolerate their threats, that Gibraltar has an inviolable right to self-determination and that Britain is studying Spain's behaviour for potential breaches of EU law
Back then, everyone here was moaning that the British Government was ‘not doing enough’.
Not any more.
‘David Cameron has been staunch on this,’ says Dominique Searle, editor of the Gibraltar Chronicle newspaper. ‘I can’t think of the last time the British Government was held in such high regard.’
In Britain, Jim Dobbin MP, Labour chairman of Westminster’s All-Party Group on Gibraltar proclaims cross-party unity on the issue.
Fabian Picardo has been touched by the response from Britain — especially Mail readers — and shows me a card he received from a little girl from London called Lucy, enclosing £10 of her pocket money. ‘There’s no address, so maybe you could ask her to get in touch so we can thank her,’ he says.
While I’m having a cup of tea with the battered Wayne McKay and his family, the view is the same. ‘If Cameron walked down Main Street, we’d shake his hand,’ says Wayne’s father, Peter, a former teacher.
He says the current situation is the worst since the days when the fascist Spanish leader General Franco closed the border completely.
‘This place was like a glorified Alcatraz back then. The only way to show my pupils the wider world was to take them on a ferry to Morocco. I’ll never forget when they all lurched over to one side of the bus. It was the first time they’d ever seen a scarecrow!’
Motorists queue at the border crossing between Spain and Gibraltar in La Linea de la Concepcion. Horns honk. Every time queues like this happen, the local tourist trade suffers another body blow
Motorists queue at the border crossing between Spain and Gibraltar in La Linea de la Concepcion. Horns honk. Every time queues like this happen, the local tourist trade suffers another body blow
Like everyone here, Peter asks how Spain has the temerity to attack Britain’s ‘colonial’ presence in Gibraltar while Spain sits on several chunks of Morocco — despite vocal protests from the Moroccan government.
In Ceuta, you can’t move for Spanish flags, Spanish road signs and Spanish police. It is impossible to find a single one of the 78,000 citizens who believes they should be Moroccan. And, interestingly, all seem sympathetic to Gibraltar.
‘If Gibraltar goes back to Spain, then we’ll have to go back to Morocco,’ says Ismail Abdel Krim, 42, a mechanic (of Moroccan descent) from the poor district of Los Rosales.
Back on the Rock, another traffic jam stretches into the distance. Horns honk. I can hear several babies screaming their heads off at various points in the queue. Every time queues like this happen, the local tourist trade suffers another body blow.
What’s the answer? Ask the FCO mandarins and they will call for calm and dialogue. Gibraltar’s UKIP MEP, William (Earl of) Dartmouth, has another idea. ‘The Queen has not been to Gibraltar for almost 60 years,’ he says. ‘Her presence would show that we mean business.’
Mr Picardo insists: ‘She needs no invitation to come to the most loyal part of her realm, and she would be assured of the warmest welcome anywhere in the world.’
Besides, it was not long ago that King Juan Carlos of Spain made a visit to Ceuta.
There is not the faintest chance of the Queen dropping by here any time soon — though next month’s National Day would be a good moment. If she did, the Spanish border would doubtless be slammed shut for days.
But it would probably be worth it just to hear what nonsense the desperate Mr Rajoy and his hypocritical sidekicks cook up next.

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A veteran Spanish journalist whose career swings from Europe to its North African neighbors, but who is disappointed and bored by the immobility of the Old Continent and increasingly looks to the south.